NSV - journey to a half-marathon, in pics. (Sort of.)

I feel so strange to type this, because I know if I hadn't found MFP it wouldn't have happened, and in my head, I am still that girl...you know, that fat girl, who isn't active. Gets out of breath trying to keep up with her long-legged husband. That girl who didn't run the mile in high school, who was never athletic, that girl who never had the endurance to finish the turbojam workouts when she tried them. Yeah, that girl. Well, this girl:



Perilously close to 200lbs, avoiding the camera, because I didn't want to admit I was that girl. Sorry for the bad pic, but it's hard to find pictures of me - much less pictures of me smiling - from "before."

Well, 205 days later on mfp...on Saturday, 1/12/13, I ran my first chip-timed half marathon. Me. I finished it! Not only finished it, but enjoyed it. I have proof!



See? I ran. And I SMILED. Me. I smiled, while running 13.1 miles. (Granted, that photographer? That dude was one smart cookie, because that picture was taken 2 miles in. I'm sure my smile wasn't so wide at say, mile 12, haha.)

I can't even begin to put into words how this makes me feel. Because 6 months ago, a year ago, 2 years ago, 5 years ago...okay, every other part of my life previous to this, I couldn't. I didn't run a mile til I was 28 years old. (No, seriously. I walked it in high school. Go me, right?) I started the couch to 5K program in August of 2012 because I felt compelled to prove that this running thing? I could do it.

Wanna know a secret? I hated it, at first. I did. I came back in from my first day, C25K W1D1, on August 1, 2012, and told my husband, "I will do this, because I said I would, but you know what I forgot? I hate running!" And I did. It was boring. It was hard. It put me out in public, in all my sweaty non-glory, huffing and puffing and unable to hide how hard it was for me. It was cringe worthy. I felt so inadequate, I hated it. Running a minute was flipping hard. Those 90 second breaks that first week? The best part, by far. By the last interval, I was dying. I was covered in sweat, it was hot, and my shins hurt. I had no idea how I was going to graduate to week 2.

But you know what? Somehow, I made it through week 1. Each week got a little easier on my head though a little harder for my body, and I continued to be amazed by what I was capable of - despite not one, but two falls that have left me with very colourful and interestingly patterned scars on both knees. After W5D3 - which is the first time you run without any walk breaks - I was hooked. Running had become my me time, the time where I didn't have a 3 year old hanging on my arm or begging me to play princesses or build castles, where I didn't have dirty dishes looming to wash or meals looming to cook or a husband to take care of. It wasn't exactly meditation, because I was running outside and I was alert, but my head would be filled with nothing but the run and it was like active meditation, my mind empty. (The very few occasions I couldn't empty my mind to run - like the day my daughter started preschool for the first time ever - I found I wasn't "there" enough to run.)

Finishing my first 5K 9/13 was both exciting, and disappointing - because I wanted to run, wanted to run faster, harder, longer, better. I was slow, averaging a 13 minute mile. My husband finished that race a full 10 minutes before I did. 10! (Remember that number, I'll mention it again in a moment.) Somehow, that girl, that girl I knew myself to be, turned out to be a different girl than I thought - and that girl was running.

On 10/27, I ran my first 10K, and I came in last. LAST! Dead last. 21/21. (Small race! http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/782125-i-came-in-last-in-my-race-this-weekend-and-loved-nsv) But you know what? Something pretty awesome happened. We didn't know it, but they had finisher medals. Yeah, medals for a 10K. Yeah, teeny little thing and my husband says it's not a real medal - but:



DUDE. I got a medal. THAT GIRL got a medal. Slowly, it clicked...that girl was a runner, and *I* was that girl. My husband ran too, and you know what? He finished 10 minutes before I did - in a race twice the distance of the first one I ran. Tell me, cool or what?

For my 29th birthday, I ran my first 10 mile race. (Which had a disaster, but this isn't a post about disasters, so I'm not going to rant.) The important part of that race is that my birthday - which I usually DESPISE - was positive, because now, I was a runner - and I ran 10 miles. TEN! And earned this sweet little bit of bling:



Yeah, that baby spins. Sweet, right?


I was hooked on running, and maybbbbe hooked on race bling.

Two weeks later, my husband ran a half marathon - only one of us could run it, and we decided he was probably never going to run again, so he had dibs, because I would eventually do a half. When he finished, I was so jealous. I wanted that to be me. Before my first 5K, I thought it would be one race, scratch it off my bucket list, and move on to something else. Even when I trained for the 10K, even when I started eyeing the 10 miler on my birthday, a half...a half still seemed crazy. Half crazy, half awesome.


Well - I finally made that a reality. Around Christmas, I registered for the Chicago Polar Dash, set for January. On 12/31, I ran 13.1 in a "virtual" half for Leukemia with the Resolution Run. 2012 had changed my life, and that run - as much as I maybe shouldn't have run 13.1 that day, with my chip timed half only 2 weeks later - was life affirming. It hurt, the last mile was literally painful, but it was life affirming. That girl, the one I used to be, couldn't have made it one before it was hard, too hard, too hard to continue. I ran 12 easy miles, and 1 hard one - and despite how hard it was, I finished, in 2:50:59. And have this little souvenir (it's much prettier in person):





But as much as that was life affirming and a fantastic way to see of 2012 as the year I changed my life, it was 1/12 that brought me to tears (and not tears of pain...although the Resolution Run didn't hurt THAT much, haha~!) in a way, with it being a virtual race, it was a glorified (amazing!) training run. On 1/12/13, I ran the Polar Dash. It didn't hurt. The last mile was hard, but it didn't hurt. My husband ran by my side, supporting me the entire way. The miles flew, I laughed, I smiled, I growled and rolled my eyes at the bad jokes my husband told. I ate my chews, I drank my water. And I ran. I ran, for 2:45:35. I crossed the finished line and had run so hard the last stretch that I was perilously close to throwing up. But I did it. I completed a half marathon.

Why? Because I can. Because now, I'm that girl - the one who can run. And oh, this too: